


better than nice

by imagines



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (no background ships in case you're wondering), Childhood Friends, First Kiss, First Love, Fluff, High School AU, M/M, Sheithmonth2019, Shiro’s gay awakening, keith pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 03:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19715107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/pseuds/imagines
Summary: Shiro has a date to junior prom next week—one of his friends from astronomy club—and it’s enough to turn Keith’s carefree, cocky best friend into a complete ball of nerves in their traditional weekend blanketfort in Keith’s room. “What if she wants me to kiss her?” he laments.“Well, do you wanna kiss her?” Keith asks.“I don’t know.” Shiro flops down into the nest of pillows, sprawling out on his back like a woebegone starfish. “I think I’m supposed to want to.”(Or, the one where neither of them have kissed anyone before, so they practice. With each other. Like friends do.)





	better than nice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carpincho_kev](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carpincho_kev/gifts).



> Carpincho_Kev drew [childhood bffs sheith kissing in a blanketfort](https://twitter.com/Carpincho_Kev/status/1144406914924785669) and my heart exploded. So I wrote about it!
> 
> And hey, it’s July, so let’s call this a belated #SheithMonth2019 free day. :p

Shiro has a date to junior prom next week—one of his friends from astronomy club—and it’s enough to turn Keith’s carefree, cocky best friend into a complete ball of nerves in their traditional weekend blanketfort in Keith’s room. “What if she wants me to kiss her?” he laments.

“Well, do you wanna kiss her?” Keith asks.

“I don’t know.” Shiro flops down into the nest of pillows, sprawling out on his back like a woebegone starfish. “I think I’m supposed to want to.”

Keith waits patiently while Shiro thinks himself through the issue.

“But I don’t want to,” Shiro finally answers. “I’ve never really wanted to kiss anyone before. What if I do it and I’m bad at it and she tells everyone and—”

“Hey,” Keith says, placing his hand on Shiro’s shoulder. Either his voice or his touch stops the anxious tumble of words from Shiro’s mouth. Keith’s heart is rattling around like the engine of his dad’s old red pickup, so loud he wonders if Shiro can hear it. He’s no expert, but he’s pretty sure what he’s about to offer is outside the bounds of a normal friendship. “If you want, you could—um—”

Shiro stares up at him, wide-eyed and quiet. Keith will have to forge ahead under his own steam.

“—You could kiss me,” he finishes. He’d meant to sound casual—gallant, even—but his voice comes out small and soft. Like he’s scared, or worse, like it’s more important to him than it should be. “Just—so you can practice, I mean.”

Silently, Shiro fiddles with the bracelet Keith gave him last summer, spinning it around and around. The slender braid of red and black thread is a product of summer camp arts and crafts, and Keith had kept it in his pocket for days before he got brave enough to offer it to Shiro. But Shiro had let Keith tie it onto his wrist with trembling fingers, and then he’d put the matching one on Keith, too. Nothing else has ever come close to the ectstasy of pleasing Shiro, and Keith’s feet had hardly touched the ground for a week straight after that. Neither of them have ever taken off the bracelets.

This moment is different, and the idea seems stupid as soon as it’s out of Keith’s mouth. He prepares himself to hear that he’s gone too far or been too weird.

“You would do that?” Shiro asks. To Keith’s surprise, Shiro doesn’t sound angry, or even disgusted.

“Of course,” Keith says, with more bravado than he feels. He can’t bring himself to look Shiro in the eye. Instead, he picks at a loose thread on the hem of his jeans. His ankles are already sticking out too far from this pair, he realizes; he’ll have to get new ones soon. “I’ve never kissed anyone either, so it’s not like I would even know if you’re not good at it. We’ve been friends forever, right? It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Friends,” Shiro echoes. “Right. Uh—” He breathes in slowly.

Keith watches Shiro’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. There’s a faint scatter of dark hair on his jaw, which Keith has noticed only in recent months. He waits, and tries to be ready for the _no_ he expects.

But Shiro doesn’t say no.

“Are you sure?” It’s almost a whisper, when Shiro finally speaks.

Keith’s heartrate has shot up from “clattering motor” to “brick in a washing machine,” but he’s never been more certain of anything in his life. He squeezes Shiro’s shoulder. “I’m sure.”

Shiro pushes himself up to a seated position. They’re only two years apart, but even crosslegged on the floor, Shiro is so much bigger than Keith already. He has to lean down to put himself within Keith’s reach. “Okay,” he says, in that same soft voice.

Shiro isn’t going to come any closer, Keith realizes. He’s going to let Keith choose when or if this happens.

Now’s as good a time as any, Keith decides. He braces his hands on the floor, closes his eyes, and tilts forward into Shiro’s space—into the unknown.

It’s weird at first, pressing his mouth to his best friend’s. Shiro’s lips are warm and dry, and his breath flickers over Keith’s face. Keith opens his eyes for a split second, but that feels even weirder, so he shuts them again. How long are you supposed to keep kissing someone? Keith has no idea, but he doesn’t really want to stop yet, despite the strangeness of it.

Then Shiro’s fingertips find Keith’s, pressing down lightly on his hand, and suddenly it’s not weird anymore.

Shiro is the first to pull back, and now he looks worried. “Was that all right?”

Keith kind of wants to shake him a little. “Yeah,” he says, trying not to sound breathless. “It was—it was fine.” Shiro seems somewhat crestfallen at that assessment of his kissing skills, so Keith gathers every scrap of his courage and amends his statement with a little more honesty. “Shiro, it felt good. I liked it.”

“Me too,” Shiro admits. “That was—nice.” At Keith’s incredulous look, he clears his throat and tries again. “Okay. Better than nice. It was really good.”

Keith feels as if he’s standing with his toes hanging off a crumbling cliff’s edge. He needs to back up; get some distance from the subject. “So…do you feel better about prom yet?”

“Like, do I want to kiss my date now?” Shiro frowns, thinking. Then he buries his face in his hands, groaning. “Nope. Still not excited about that idea.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” Keith points out. “You can just tell her how you feel. She’s your friend. It’ll be okay.”

“I wish you could go with me,” Shiro mumbles, still from behind his hands. “…Sorry,” he adds. “That was probably a weird thing to say.”

“No, I get it.” Keith pats his shoulder awkwardly. “I wish I could too.” Right now he’s a grade behind, due to what his school called _discipline issues_ and what Keith called _a normal response to his only remaining parent dying suddenly_ , but he’s determined to catch up by way of summer classes. Still, that puts him just shy of the requirement to attend prom this year.

“Next year,” Shiro says, abruptly coming out of hiding. His cheeks are so red. Keith can’t understand why. “Next year, can I ask you?”

“To—” It takes a moment to fit the pieces together. “To your _senior_ prom? Don’t you want to take—I don’t know—a real date?”

“I mean as my date.” Shiro bites his lip. “But it’s okay if you don’t want to. You don’t have to go, or we could go as friends, or—”

“Shiro,” Keith says, to get him to pause and take a breath. “I’ll go with you. On one condition.”

Shiro nods, a little frantic. “Sure. Yes. What is it?”

Keith is floating. This is _way_ better than the bracelets. “Keep practicing kissing me until then?”

“Obviously,” Shiro breathes, and this time, neither of them are nervous anymore.


End file.
